There are 2 major visual field distrations; inside the monitor, outside the monitor.

First, inside the monitor:
Since 1997, my desktop background has been “Solid Gray Medium”. I’ve played with other shades of gray, but always found SGM to be the most neutral, keeping the focus on the applications I’m working in and making screenshots very easy. I’ve seen backgrounds that cycle through a photo library or show pictures of kids or pets. All of those are terribly distracting for me, especially since I don’t own any pets.

More recently, I’ve introduced a ‘clean out’ folder. This folder has 2 purposes; be the only thing on the desktop, be empty. The former is much more common than the latter. This is the ‘download folder’ for all browsers and where I send interesting URLs, text clippings, etc. It’s my non-email inbox. Like my email, I sort the items of my ‘clean out’ directory in reverse chronological order. Far easier than hunting down things in a cluttered Desktop.

Now, outside the monitor
This is the stuff in your office that peaks into your visual field. The door that’s not quite shut, the flickering light, the crocked picture, the pile of papers. There are 2 very effective ways to solve this problem; get a bigger monitor to hide them, actually getting out of your chair and fixing the things that are bugging you.

I encourage both approaches, as both will calm you make you ask yourself, “why haven’t I done this sooner?”

I normally have around 10 different applications open and running at any given time – a persistent set of communications apps (Adium, Mail.app, SpamSieve), a couple browsers (Safari, Camino), and the 2-4 apps necessary for whatever I’m doing at the time.

Adium’s Preferences really let you dial it’s presence down.
In Advanced > Contact List > Window Handling select Automatically hide the contact list > While Adium is in the background.
This effectively hides Adium when it’s not the active application, like when you’re not sending messages.

In Camino, I’ve turned off Flash animations – so much less annoying when they’re a click away. Preferences > Web Features and check Block Flash animations

Lastly, I played with Growl for half a day, while its purpose is to provide a single channel for all notifications, it was too much and felt like I was on a Windows box. If my job was to watch Growl all day, it’d be perfect. But that’s not my job.

The human eye is extremely sensitive to changes in the visual field – especially in the periphery. The OS X Finder places quite a few distractions – changing things unrelated to the task at hand – in the edges of the screen.

Let’s eliminate them.

Start by opening up System Preferences:

Dock: Check "Automatically hide and show the Dock"
This will hide any dock-icon based indicators (unread mail, etc).

Sound > Options: Uncheck "Show volume in the menu bar"
The indicator that shows up when you change the volume is so much better.

Date & Time > Clock: Uncheck "Show the date and time"
It was the changing clock that started me on this quest to eliminate distractions. My replacement – the world clock Dashboard Widget.

Now open up Internet Connect, select AirPort and Uncheck"Show AirPort status in menu bar"
This keeps changes in the wifi signal from distracting you (you’ll probably feel it in the page loads if something happens, to verify an issue, open up Internet Connect).

Unless everyone in the office is working on the exact same part of the same project – where the office should be excited and alive – the office should be dead quiet, otherwise someone is being distracting.

Between email, IM, and phone, I have close virtual proximity to my co-workers. These are far lower-fidelity interruptions (and therefore more productive) than a shouting over the cubicle wall or hanging out next to my desk.

Many offices I’ve been in were too much about socializing around reality TV programs for my taste. The most productive offices I’ve been in? I had a desk in the back corner of an otherwise empty room. Made me think I should just work from home.